Google respects privacy, no more ads and Gmail account scanning

Google has promised to stop reading the students Gmail accounts for advertisement purpose. Users who have joined the Google Apps for Education will see an enhanced Educational experience without ads.

It seems that Google is in full privacy-control mode as the company said Wednesday that it has permanently removed the ads from the Apps for Education suite. Also, it wouldn’t scan student’s Gmail accounts for advertising purposes. The company believes in enhancing the educational experience for Google Apps for Education.

For those who aren’t aware, Google Apps for Education is a free service used by over 30 million users from around the world, mostly students, teachers and administrators. Gmail, Google Calendar, Google Talk and Google Drive are some of the apps currently offered under the service.

Bram Bout, director of Google for Education posted in a blog post, “Earning and keeping students, teachers and administrators trust drives our business forward. We know that trust is earned through protecting their privacy and providing the best security measures.”

He also touted that due to privacy concerns, Ads are turned off by default in Apps for Education services. Even ads were removed from Google Search for signed-in K-12 users’ altogether.

A similar change is also expected for all Google Apps customers including Business, Government and legacy users. Mountain View Company will provide an update once the rollout is complete.

These changes might be the result of a lawsuit filed by some students claiming that Google scanned their emails for targeted ads. Last month, same thing happened with Microsoft that faced strong criticism for snooping a suspected user’s email account. The Redmond Giant changed its privacy policy immediately after the incident.